Un'eterna Giovinezza Vita e Mito di Carlo Michelstaedter by Sergio Campailla

Un'eterna Giovinezza Vita e Mito

di Carlo Michelstaedter by Sergio Campailla is a story tormented and with a sad end. The title remembered me what once written by an American correspondent many years ago about Marylin Monroe: "She died young and she will always be remembered as a wonderful and beautiful woman." Same is for Carlo.

Born in Gorizia, his dad was a solid Jewish man, with profound tradition, a good position, and created with the wife four children. Carlo grew up in a good humus, with siblings close to him and vice versa. Sure his soul became soon tormanted and the moment of fracture when he left for studying in Florence. Substantially Carlo didn't know yet what he would have wanted to do with his life and what course he would have wanted to attend. Avid correspondent and letter-writer, he was a voracious creator of sketches, drawing and paintings as well. He inundated his family with letters, sketches of people he met along his way and at the same time he started to be open to all the possibilities. Unfortunately, as it happens sometimes, doors, in any sector, journalism, drawing, creative arts, remained close. No one embraced the arrival of Carlo in Florence. He tried his best for finding a financial independance (in the past he also thought of reaching his brother in New York City) passing through newsmagazines, magazines, but without any success.

He hasn't been lucky in this sense also thinking at his friends. Yes, he met two established, later people of culture, but that ones, of course at the moment were also building their own existence.

His main problem became bad encounters to my point of view, and for someone like him so sensitive, meeting wrong people has been devastating. This giving private lessons in Florence for earning some money was fatal, because once a lady, more old than him captured his attention. He absolutely adored this creature; he venerated this woman, Russian, with an intense past, rejected by her family, a sort of expat in Florence. Fascinating, sensual, it was simple for Carlo to fall in love for her, but what will destabilize him a lot and without any possibility of recovering was the suicide of Nadia. He was devastated; he tried all his best for reacting at this news rationally, but the distance of this young man, sensitive, and imaginative, from his family caused in his soul a profound mutation; he was becoming different. He was Jewish but he didn't like to observes Jewish's traditions. Carlo loved to eat ham, and other food in general prohibited and became less observant also under many aspects. From a little town to a big city like Florence was, he reacted at authors like Vasari with great diffidance; in this sense I confess that also where I studied, a little center, there was the idea that Vasari didn't have a great reputation writing tons of lies about the various stellar characters he portrayed; for this reason I haven't never read his book. 

After the departure of Nadia nothing was back like in the past; in family when he returned home there were frequent discussions; his dad wrote him some guidelines important and that needed to be followed by him; he was strongly deluded by this son; he fell in love for another wrong girl and it was another fight qith his family; the existence of Carlo has been not just tribulated but surrounded also by a lot of suicides. Not just the one of Nadia, but also the one of his beloved brother in New York and after two years, because he couldn't find a future for him in any kind of field, and was still dependant by his family, from his own.

There was in his mother's family a big trace of depression and maybe that was why the story of Carlo ended up in this way.

It's a difficult book this one, that will leave you a profound melancholy and, as it happens when there are cases of suicides involved, of big failure. Failure of society, families; suicide just remove from the person to other ones problems. We musn't never forget it.

More than feeling shame, the family of Carlo should have asked to themselves where they committed errors. They could not help the son in NYC, clear, but maybe the local one yes, while they buried his body during the night, for avoiding chats and gossip. But: is gossip more important than a son? Or the good name of a family? Oh well...

Sometimes maybe it is true: it's difficult to find peace in this world.

The author of this book is "obsessed" by Carlo  and he wrote many books regarding his works giving back some peace at this young man gone too soon.

I thank Marislio Editori for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori